Fascinated with Frozen

Both of my girls are obsessed with Frozen. We saw the movie over Thanksgiving weekend and it has been three weeks of non-stop Frozen in this house since then. I know this doesn’t seem like something to discuss on a blog about books, but go with me on this.

The story, if you somehow missed it, is loosely based on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen. The official synopsis says “When a prophecy traps a kingdom in eternal winter, Anna, a fearless optimist, teams up with extreme mountain man Kristoff and his sidekick reindeer Sven on an epic journey to find Anna’s sister Elsa, the Snow Queen, and put an end to her icy spell. Encountering mystical trolls, a funny snowman named Olaf, Everest-like extremes and magic at every turn, Anna and Kristoff battle the elements in a race to save the kingdom from destruction.”

By now, everyone is talking about the movie, so I shouldn’t be giving anything away when I say that it is a change for Disney to have made a movie that focuses on the power of the love of two sisters. So as a mom of two girls, I love to see my girls so infatuated with this movie and sharing the experience with each other. We have the full CD and it gets played over and over and over again – actually, they each have a copy burned and it is what is listened to every night at bedtime. This past weekend found the two of them “rehearsing” the story and then acting it out with costumes and everything. In the same way that the sisters Anna and Elsa are kept apart from each other at the beginning of the movie, Frozen has in some ways brought my girls even closer together.

It doesn’t surprise me that my book obsessed girls are also obsessed with the books that go along with Frozen. E got a copy of the story with CD for Hanukkah and it is a great option, especially for little ones who enjoy listening to their stories on CD, which is her current favorite thing. We have also purchased the large Golden Book, which is miles better than the small Golden book and completely worth the $9. It tells the whole story rather than a very condensed version.

While those are the only books we currently own, we have spent enough time in the local bookstores reading all of the other books that I feel pretty comfortable highlighting a few of those as well. There is a book that is “2 books in 1” – each book goes until the center staple and it comes with stickers. The stories are incredibly shortened and told from the point of view of each girl, but it completely captivates E and I am asked to read it whenever she can get her hands on it.

There are a ton of step into reading books and a junior novelization to encourage readers to pick up a book on a familiar topic. We don’t need to buy any of those since J isn’t a reluctant reader, but they are a great thing to have and marvelous for emerging readers. We might find ourselves purchasing the Essential Guide put out by DK as we have enjoyed other versions of those in the past.

Finally, what is interesting about a story like this is that it can also encourage kids to read the original Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale which inspired not only Frozen, but The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, the more recent story Breadcrumbs, and countless others. We have a book of Hans Christian Anderson stories as they were originally written, but this particular story is the longest that he wrote and very hard to follow in the original version. We came home from the movie and immediately looked at it, but there was no way for my 6 year old to grasp it.

That doesn’t mean that reading the original is out of the question. In looking around, there seems to be a beautiful version by Barefoot Books that comes with a CD or as a paperback confident reader.

It is wonderful when a modern take on a story can help encourage a child to go back to the original and the fairy tales that have served as inspiration for so many years are always worth revisiting.